#oneaday Day 679: Hold on to the night, there will be no shame

I was randomly reminded of the existence of Robot Unicorn Attack this evening, and I am pleased to report that despite Flash being long-dead, you can actually still play the original (complete with Erasure soundtrack) over at CrazyGames. We are officially living in an age where Flash, as a platform, is old enough to have Web-based emulators. Not only that, this blog is old enough to have posts referring to the original incarnation of Robot Unicorn Attack, along with its excellent Facebook-based incarnation. Now there's something I don't say very often.

For the unfamiliar, Robot Unicorn Attack is a simple, "endless runner" game with just two buttons: one to jump (which can be used again in mid-air for a double-jump), and one for a rainbow attack dash move that can break through crystal stars. Your one and only goal in Robot Unicorn Attack is to survive as long as possible and score as many points as you can across three "wishes" (lives). As the game says when you start it, "you will fail". And indeed you will. But then you will try again, and again, and again.

It's a potent example at arcade-style game design at its absolute best: provide an experience that is extremely easy to understand, even for those who don't play a lot of games, and then balance it just well enough to make it inordinately compelling rather than frustrating, but still challenging. It is unironically one of the most well-crafted games of the 2010s, and I'm glad that people have found a means of preserving it — and in a fashion that is true to its original incarnation, no less. As a Flash game, originally published by Adult Swim, Robot Unicorn Attack's home is very much on the Web, and while I certainly wouldn't be averse to having an offline version I could play at any time I want, you can't get much more convenient than just going to a website and playing using nothing more than the Z and X keys on your keyboard.

Web games are in such a strange place right now. There's always been a certain amount of cloning and overly derivative stuff, but this seems to be particularly rife these days. There are about a billion variations on the "run down the path and go through gates with numbers on them" game. I don't know what the original and first one of those was; I just know there are now so many of them it is, at times, difficult to find anything else.

It doesn't help that a lot of today's Web games are adaptations of mobile games, with all the obnoxious predatory monetisation and infestation with adverts that entails. But, like I say, I'm pleased to see that some of the all-time classics are preserved through emulation — and best of all, no-one can bitch at you about not playing on "original hardware" if you play Robot Unicorn Attack on CrazyGames, or anywhere else it might be hosted, because it always was intended to just be played right there in your browser.

Now that I've rediscovered it, I think it might be time for a high score run or twenty before bed. Sing it with me, now… always, I want to be with you, and make believe with you, and live in harmony, harmony, oh love…

Want to read my thoughts on various video games, visual novels and other popular culture things? Stop by MoeGamer.net, my site for all things fun where I am generally a lot more cheerful. And if you fancy watching some vids on classic games, drop by my YouTube channel.

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#oneaday Day 678: Chillin' with my Tomodachi

On something of a whim — and after seeing a number of people whose opinions I generally trust enthusing about it — I decided to pick up the new Tomodachi Life game for Switch. I didn't really know much about it going into it, and I bounced hard off the two separate attempts I've made to get into Animal Crossing, so it's not a decision I took lightly. But I'm pleased to report after a brief play at lunchtime — and a much, much longer play this evening — I'm well and truly charmed.

This is Nintendo at its most "software toy" I think I've ever seen them — although I say this with the caveat that I never played the 3DS version of Tomodachi Life. It's a delight. It's like playing The Sims without having to do the boring and annoying bits. It's like playing a citybuilder without having to worry about complicated management things. It's what mobile and social games might have been if they had never been corrupted by greed and predatory monetisation strategies.

Above all, though, it's a medium through which you can express and play with your creativity and imagination, and I love that. While the first couple of hours or so are deliberately constrained to introduce you to the basic features of the game and its interface, it doesn't take long to get to a point where you've unlocked most of the main "mechanics", such as they are, and can start using them to play with your creations in the little world you gradually build for them.

It's possibly the best use of the "Miis" that Nintendo have had on their consoles since the Wii days, and the delightfully lo-fi synthesised speech they talk in — no AI-generated voices here — is a pleasant reminder of a more innocent age.

That can be said about the whole experience, really. It's a reminder of when we all had the capacity to play imaginatively, only now our imaginations can be supported by interactivity. No longer do you have to pretend your dolls are talking to one another, because now they actually do talk to one another — although you're not always privy to the details of all their conversations. (Rather charmingly, you can catch the odd word here and there, and most of these are things that you've previously entered into the game as subjects for them to talk about with one another, meaning my little collection of Miis likes talking about flatulence, eating sausages, cats and F-15 Strike Eagles.

I'll have some more to say about this delightful little game over on MoeGamer when I've spent a bit more time with it. But for now I can say confidently that I'm glad I decided to take a punt on this silly little game. The kind of silliness it offers is precisely what the world needs right now — much as Animal Crossing came along at the exact right time when the pandemic hit. (Even if I didn't get along with Animal Crossing personally, I at least appreciate what it represented.)

Anyway, I've peppered this article with a few screenshots from this evening's session. As I say, I'll have much more to say in the near future, but for now, I should probably go to bed rather than checking in on everyone one last time this evening…

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#oneaday Day 677: Understaffed and overpriced

"It's so cool that literally every job now is understaffed by 30-50%. It's great because I didn't want whatever it was done well or with any care at all. But please keep raising prices anyway."

– @headfallsoff.com, via Bluesky

I saw this post earlier and it resonated. I'm sure that right now, wherever you are in the world, you are feeling some variation of this thought. You are probably also feeling as bewildered as I am at why this is all the case. Yes, the economy is fucked due to the AI bubble, private equity dominating everything and the stock market continually doing weird things (a shoe company "pivoted to AI" recently and their stock value exploded!), but surely some things are constant. Like, say, the need for groceries.

Our local big Sainsbury's is a prime example. It's a decently sized supermarket that serves a wide area in the town; it's conveniently located, as it's somewhat on the outskirts of the general urban area, and it's also near a number of local amenities, such as a doctor's surgery and bingo hall. It does plenty of business, as the car park is always pretty full and there are always people in it.

So why have I only ever seen one person actually on the checkouts at a time? There are like five or six conventional checkout lanes (plus a large self-checkout area for trolleys, and another separate large self-checkout area for baskets, inevitably with at least one person using a trolley in it) and there only ever seem to be about three people on hand at any time: one person begrudgingly staffing the conventional checkout, and two people milling around the self-checkout areas, occasionally noticing that yes, you are, in fact, old enough to purchase a can of Monster and gracing you with their woefully insecure three-digit user ID and password combo to confirm this fact in the eyes of the law.

"Just use the self-checkouts," you'll probably say. And that's sometimes fine. Except when you run into the inevitable Unexpected Item in Bagging Area incidents, or the aforementioned need to prove your legal worthiness to consume drinks that don't taste like anything Nature has ever produced, or you're buying a shirt with a security tag on it, or you're buying alcohol, or you have two packets of paracetamol in your basket, or… you get the idea.

A good example from my own experience is a rather middle-class problem, but it shows how these checkouts being inexplicably left fallow can be a genuine issue if you need to speak to an actual person in order to achieve something during your shopping trip. We have a SodaStream, and SodaStream does a thing where if you return your old gas cylinder at the same time as getting a new one, you get ten quid off the new one. It's worth doing, as it means you don't have to worry about disposing of bulky gas cylinders, and it's cheaper. Yet, as far as I'm aware, there is no means of carrying out this process yourself at the self-checkouts, meaning you need to go to a staffed checkout. If there's only one person working the staffed checkouts at any given time, this can mean you'll be in for a long wait. If you go in at the wrong time of day, when there are no people on the staffed checkouts, then you're fucked.

Like I say, it's a very middle-class example. But I'm sure there are other instances where you need (or just prefer) to interact with an actual human being, and there are times of day where that's literally impossible at this Sainsbury's. Why do they even have that many checkout aisles if they're never, ever going to use all of them?

Is it because they don't have the money to pay enough staff to man those checkouts? I doubt it, particularly since prices are through the roof. I can pop to the shop to get a few snacky bits and household bits and pieces — i.e. not a "big shop" — and easily spend £50 these days. That's more expensive than a video game! (For now, anyway.) I feel like if you spend more than it costs to get a new PlayStation game, you should come away with more than a few bags of crisps, bottles of drink and packets of cat food.

To be clear, I don't blame any of the workers staffing either the conventional checkouts or the self-checkout aisles for this. It is not their fault, and they probably wish they had more people helping out, too. It is, almost certainly, a failing of management, presumably initiated on the grounds that they want to "do more with less" or some other such LinkedIn platitude at their corporate overlords' behest. In that sense, it's probably not even the managers' fault, but instead, as with everything else, the blame can, without a doubt, be laid at the feet of the out-of-touch executive class and/or private equity.

One day we'll be free of all this. I don't know that. But I have to believe it. Because things don't seem to be getting a whole lot better right now, and the prospect of continuing to endure the world being such a shitty place is becoming increasingly intolerable.

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#oneaday Day 676: Shuffle post

Every so often, I like to hit the "Random Post" button in my menu bar and see what the lack of "algorithm" on this site serves me up. At least, I don't think there's an algorithm beyond POST=INT(RND(0)*NUMBEROFPOSTS)+1 — although oddly enough, I do feel like certain posts do come up more often than others whenever I feel like browsing back through the archives.

Anyway, today I'm going to link you to some of these randomly selected posts and you can have a look at them. If you want to. I don't mind if you don't. I'm not your Dad or your teacher, just some loser on the Internet who does… this.

Anyway.

Cardinal Quest is out on iOS, and you should probably buy it (10/6/2012) – This was back in the days before mobile gaming completely lost the plot and became nothing but predatory gacha and free-to-play games. Cardinal Quest was a decent roguelike with a nice pixel art aesthetic, from what I recall, and it was a decent fit for mobile thanks to its relatively straightforward mechanics. It is, unfortunately, no longer available on iOS, and it seems its PC port is gone from the Internet, too; it was originally distributed by the short-lived "Steam for indies" service, Desura, and also by BMTMicro, whoever the fuck they are. Desura is now a sketchy-looking webgame portal, and BMTMicro says Cardinal Quest is "no longer available for purchase". There was also apparently a sequel in 2015 that is still available on a platform people actually use — Steam — and seems well-regarded by the 115 people who bothered to review it. Did you buy Cardinal Quest on iOS in 2012? I did. Unfortunately I no longer have anything to play it on and I bet I can't download it any more either.

So very very tired (17/6/2025) – A recent one! This one was me bemoaning the fact that Uncle Ben's instant noodle packets have an AI-generated picture of the noodles on the front of them. You know, the noodles in the packet. The ones they could have probably cooked up and photographed quite easily. Honestly, I cannot wait for the day when I no longer feel the need to write posts about how frustrating I find the AI fad, but that day has not come along just yet, unfortunately.

Glee – it's a feeling you get when your brain finally lets your heart get in its pants (30/1/2012) – I forget the exact origin of the quote in the headline, because sadly I did not come up with it myself. A brief Google reveals that it is from Community (specifically, a Christmas episode which is a Glee parody, and which also features the memorable scene of Alison Brie singing "boopy-doopy-doop-doop-SEX" while dressed in a Santa outfit) — but this post was not about that episode. No, it was actually about Glee, which I eventually watched after I saw the Community parody of it, and after I got over my curious resistance to it. I thought it was popular and thus probably wasn't any good, but I ended up enjoying it quite a bit. Can't remember anything about it now, mind, but it was a pleasant enough watch at the time, as this post suggests.

Hypnospace (8/7/2024) – I played Hypnospace Outlaw back in July of 2024, and enjoyed it enough to blog a bit about it. It's a memorable, worthwhile game that I recommend, so I'll just let this post do the talking.

No half-measures for Ultima (22/5/2022) – This post is about the fact I bought a laser printer because I had got sick of the expense of running modern inkjet printers, and I wanted a means of quickly and easily printing out documentation for retro games. In this case, the Ultima series, which I have been meaning to go through properly at some point, but have still not gotten around to beyond a few videos showing me trying them out for the first time. One day!

Type Zero (19/11/2016) – Final Fantasy Type-0 is a game that I feel is probably mostly forgotten about today, but it was an interesting spinoff in the Final Fantasy series that did some intriguing things with game structure, battle mechanics and all manner of other things. The PS4 version is a good way to experience it, as I talk about a bit in this post.

Defiant Destiny (27/3/2011) – A post about pondering the future as it appeared to be extending out in front of me as of 2011. At that time, I was still picking up the shattered pieces of my life somewhat after a tumultuous 2010, but I was starting to see the possibility that things might not end up being a complete disaster. I would still have plenty of challenges to face, and I don't think 2011 me would believe 2026 me if I went back and told him the state of the world right now, but it was nice to have at least a brief moment where there was kind of, sort of a feeling of hope to cling on to.

That seems like a nice place to leave things, no? Hope. Remember that?

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#oneaday Day 675: The worst ever

I happened to see some Discourse earlier — I know, I know, I'm trying to give it up — that centred around someone taking the piss out of a random Backloggd user's list of the "worst JRPGs ever". The list itself was stupid, of course — even leaving aside factual inaccuracies like Senran Kagura being on there (Senran Kagura, for the unfamiliar, is a beat 'em up and/or arena fighter, depending on which entry you're playing), there were some atomic-level bad takes involved — but what stank always as much were the responses to it.

One that jumped out at me was someone saying that "everything Persona post-3 is abysmal" in response to the first Revelations: Persona game being on the list. And just… come on. Those games are some of the most well-regarded examples of their genre ever. Sure, you might not jive with them personally, particularly if you're not someone who gets on well with lengthy, primarily text-based story sequences, but to stretch that out into those games being "abysmal" is… well, it's an absolutely abysmal take, it has to be said.

The trouble is, this kind of shit is engagement bait. I'm engaging with it by talking about it, even if I'm not linking directly to it, when the sensible thing to do would have been to just go "huh", close the tab and then never think about other people with Bad Opinions ever again. Negativity is engagement — and, to paraphrase an excellent video I watched earlier today (thanks, Chris), it's actually one of the most potent forms of engagement there is. So it should probably be little surprise that we're constantly bombarded with takes about the "worst [x] ever" rather than enthusiasm about cool things.

I always make an effort not to do this with my own material — that which is on a specific subject, anyway. I know I can get a tad negative on this here blog at times, but that's part of the point of this place — for it to be a place where I can vent off some steam, express my frustrations and get things out of my head rather than letting them fester. On MoeGamer, my gaming website, and my YouTube channel, however, I make a point of always trying my very best to "find the fun" — even in stuff which is well-known as being "bad". My proudest achievement in that regard was successfully finding genuine enjoyment in the notorious Sonic the Hedgehog reboot from 2006, a game which, for a while, Wikipedia described (without citation) as "considered to be one of the worst in the entire video game medium". (That line isn't there any more.)

But what is the result of that? For the most part, probably a fraction of the visibility that I'd get if I just put out a video on how "bad" Amiga platform games are, or how "terrible" the graphics on Atari 2600 are, or how much of a waste of time existing in this miserable world is. I don't have any intention of changing, however; if I'm feeling like this, I'm sure at least a few other people are feeling like this, too. And if, through the things I do online, I can provide those people with an escape from the constant bombardment of negativity and "worst thing ever" content, I consider that a success, regardless of anything the numbers say.

Most of these people saying something is the "worst [X] ever" have no real frame of reference of what "the worst" really looks like. What they really mean is either "I, personally, did not like this" or, more commonly, "popular opinion suggests that this game is not very good and I am not going to argue against that". And I'm so very, very tired of it. I want to sit anyone who thinks something like Persona 4 or 5 are bad down with some long-defunct mobile game shit like Rage of Bahamut and show them what a really, genuinely, actually bad game is.

But I better not. I can see the thumbnails already. Although for some reason, gacha games have remained curiously immune to being branded "bad" games, despite a lot of them really, genuinely being not only absolutely terrible from a design and mechanical perspective, but actively hostile to their players. That's probably something to talk about another day, though.

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#oneaday Day 674: A product of its time

For some reason, I decided to start re-watching the Channel 4 comedy show Peep Show recently. I say re-watch; I'm not sure I've ever watched it all the way through, but it is a show that I always used to like, and as the show that shot David Mitchell and Robert Webb to stardom (or at the very least "household name" status), it's something I've always considered to be fairly evergreen, even if its somewhat "cringe comedy" nature makes it unpalatable to some folks — my wife being one of them.

I was dismayed to discover upon starting my rewatch that Peep Show is over twenty fucking years old. I don't know why, given that I remember having DVDs of it just after my time at university, but I've always thought of it as a relatively "recent" show. But no! It's a show that pre-dates smartphones and flatscreen TVs and monitors; it's a show that is old enough to come with one of those "this show was made in 2003 and is not representative of today's values" disclaimers that you normally see on shit from the 1920s.

The source of this particular warning is a scene early in the second series that is essentially blackface. I say "essentially" because the scene in question is actually criticising blackface, particularly in the context of using it as something to be deliberately provocative — or even a fetish — but it still involves Robert Webb with his skin painted a darker colour and thus I appreciate that to some, it may be hard to defend.

I do find the whole "today's values" thing mildly interesting, and occasionally annoying. I find it especially grating when people start talking about how a piece of dialogue is "problematic", when the dialogue in question is supposed to be depicting a character that is a piece of shit. There's a certain subset of people, many of whom have grown up with what passes for cultural critique on asinine platforms like TikTok, who have a very black-and-white (no pun intended, given the above) view of morality in fiction. These people tend to find it especially "problematic" — a word I've always hated, if that wasn't already clear — when "villains" of the piece act in a villainous manner. Who would have thought it?

I mean, sure. You probably can get across the fact that a person is a piece of shit without resorting to actions and utterances that are offensive by modern standards. But at the same time, I do feel writers should be able to depict characters who are offensive in some way or another — otherwise your critique of them and their actions lacks a bit of bite. It's like all the people on YouTube who bleep out any time they say words like "sex" or "death". It's a bit too much, y'know?

Obviously I'm not advocating for black-and-white minstrel shows and racial slurs 24/7, but I feel like there comes a point where you can wrap modern audiences in cotton wool just a little too much, and the result is an entire cohort of people who cannot cope with being challenged by fiction even a little bit. We already see this on "BookTok" (ugh). Don't even get me started on those idiots.

I guess, thinking rationally, the solution Channel 4 took with this Peep Show episode is probably as good as one can expect right now; the episode itself is untouched, it just has a warning before you watch it. And, as far as I'm aware, that hasn't caused any particular scandals around the place online. So perhaps we should just keep quiet, acknowledge these when they exist and just get on with things. Because the alternative is a dark place for the creative arts, as we're already starting to get a hint of in some places.

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#oneaday Day 673: Journey, not destination

The advice "it's about the journey, not the destination" is valid in a lot of contexts, but I find that there's a very literal reading of it that I find particularly worthwhile. And that is when it comes to taking some exercise, particularly if you are not someone who is generally inclined towards such things.

Since the weather has turned nice, I've gone out for a couple of walks. I had a short walk on the common the other day, and this morning after breakfast, I decided to just leave my house, set off in whatever direction I felt like, and just keep walking. I ended up having a very lovely walk of approximately 5 kilometres, burning a nice number of calories due having to haul my disgusting fat carcass around with me wherever I go, and coming home feeling rather satisfied with myself.

What I discovered along the way is that on the outward journey, when I didn't have a particular destination in mind, I felt like I could pretty much go forever. I kept walking and walking and walking until I had got quite a distance away from my house. And I was enjoying it; I found some nice little scenic areas, even, which you will see photographs of punctuating this blog post. It's always nice when you find pleasant green areas within a reasonably sized and generally quite busy city.

The moment I felt like I was "on the way back", though, things became several orders of magnitude more difficult. It's weird! It was like a switch flipped in my mind, a big countdown appeared (figuratively speaking), and I was aware of quite how far I still had left to go before I could call proceedings to a halt. I had to take several breaks on this "return leg" of the journey, because I kept getting to points where I felt like I wanted to get home, but also where I wasn't sure I had the energy to make it all the way back without stopping.

Okay, it doesn't help that we live on top of a hill, and thus whichever direction I set out from when I go for a walk, I always have to end my journey by climbing a hill that might not look that steep, but which is always absolutely exhausting to walk up. Well, it is if you're a fat shit like me, anyway.

Still, I feel like if I had just kept walking "outwards", I could have probably made it even further afield. Could I have made it into the town centre? I don't know — maybe. I wasn't far off making it to one of the local shopping areas. And if I had made it there, I could have always stopped for a coffee and then even got the bus back home if I had really wanted to.

Perhaps that's the answer. Just walk and walk and walk outwards, then for the return journey catch the bus. Is that cheating? I don't think it is, is it? Not if you are able to make the outward journey significantly longer as a result of knowing that you're not going to have to walk back again.

Maybe I'll try that next time out. I just need to familiarise myself with the bus routes around the area, I guess!

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#oneaday Day 672: Return to virtuality

Since starting Resident Evil 7 in VR a little while ago — after discovering that our carefully cable-managed solution for PSVR did not, in fact, work due to using a USB extender that didn't do data — I've been getting a bit back into VR stuff. And the good thing with the original PSVR is that because its games are a few years old now, they're exceedingly cheap. I picked up Wipeout Omega Collection, Battlezone, No Man's Sky (I know what I said a couple of days ago, but… c'mon) and Ultrawings to give a try, and add these to the several VR games already on my shelf that I haven't got around to playing yet, such as the second Summer Lesson game, and the PSVR visual novel, Tokyo Chronos.

I'm installing Wipeout as we speak. I suspect this will be the most… challenging to deal with, shall we say, but I'm also looking forward to giving it a try. I love thrill rides, but as a fat person I cannot ride real ones, so I'm hoping that something like Wipeout will scratch that itch somewhat. And even if it doesn't, I've been meaning to try Wipeout Omega Collection for a long time anyway.

The others I know a bit less about. I know Battlezone was quite well-regarded when it first launched quite early in the PSVR's lifespan, No Man's Sky should hopefully be quite an experience — though I do wonder how its more complex gameplay elements will translate to VR — and Ultrawings I know nothing about, but it was three quid so even if it's rubbish I don't mind.

VR has its flaws, particularly with earlier implementations like the first PSVR. But I do like it. It's an interesting way of experiencing things, and it's kind of a shame that it has never quite taken off in the way anyone really hoped it would — largely due to those flaws, in many cases, and the expense in others. (That said, I bet you could probably grab yourself a PSVR relatively cheap now. PSVR2 is still pricey though.) I will be interested to see what the supposed "Steam Frame" does for VR, if anything; saying that, I will be interested to see whether it launches at all, given the, uh, "challenges" that tech is facing right now as a result of ongoing AI cuntishness and… various geopolitical events, shall we say.

Anyway, Wipeout has finished installing, so I'm off to give it a quick blast before my dinner and to see if my stomach contents remain intact. Wish me luck!

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#oneaday Day 671: Doki Doki janai

Apparently Doki Doki Literature Club has been removed from the Google Play store. According to its publishers, Serenity Forge, this was because "the game's content violates [Google's] Terms of Service in its depiction of sensitive themes".

Chances are if you are even a little bit plugged into gaming news you know what Doki Doki Literature Club is at this point; if you don't, I did a spoileriffic writeup on it over on MoeGamer back around the time it first started getting attention — nearly ten years ago at this point, Jesus. To summarise for those disinclined to click a link (you know who you are), Doki Doki Literature Club is a visual novel that plays with expectations and tropes of the format to deliver a potent narrative, primarily about mental health but also dealing with subjects such as parasocial relationships with non-existent (or perhaps it would be better to say non-sentient) entities like game characters.

It's a modern classic! Granted, uncharitable sorts might argue it started a somewhat unwelcome trend of western-developed visual novels that felt the need to be self-consciously subversive, insincere and ironic, but it can't really be blamed for what other people did in its wake; Doki Doki Literature Club itself, despite deliberately subverting a lot of classic visual novel/dating sim tropes in the name of telling what is essentially a horror narrative, is a well-written piece of work that makes good use of its medium (and the unique characteristics of that medium) to engage the player and get them thinking about how they are interacting with the characters involved.

Make no mistake, it goes to some dark places — its ESRB M/PEGI 18 ratings are well-deserved, though for those about to make an assumption about it being a visual novel, these ratings are not due to any sexual content. Rather, it gives an uncompromising look at mental health matters, and that sometimes there is no "winning", particularly when you are attempting to support someone else through a difficult time in their life, rather than taking command of your own destiny.

But there's the thing: it's already got those ratings, which make it suitable for worldwide distribution, along with various other ratings from other worldwide ratings bodies, such as CERO in Japan (where, interestingly, it only netted a "C" rating — an equivalent to 15/16 ratings elsewhere in the world) and it is, at this point, widely agreed to be a worthwhile work of art. For Google Play to suddenly decide that it is unacceptable is… bizarre, but not entirely unexpected, sadly.

Those who follow certain corners of the Internet may be aware that there has been a lot of unrest surrounding Visa and MasterCard seemingly interfering with online purchases of late — particularly when those purchases relate to adult (and specifically sexual) content. Naturally, this put sex workers, erotic artists, adult performers and makers of adults-only games in a somewhat difficult position, as it was making it significantly more difficult for them to make a living.

These things always start with porn, because porn is easy to attack. It's the thing that, while people might talk about it openly on the Internet, is still a great taboo in society — and one that is difficult to defend, particularly when you're talking to people who aren't breathing Internet fumes all day. Who wants to be the one standing up and saying that yes, porn is fine and good and should be protected just as with any other form of creative expression? Don't you know that porn is exploitative, and no-one gets involved in it willingly?

While I won't deny that there are parts of the sex work industry — speaking very broadly here — which are exploitative, in the modern day we live in an at least somewhat enlightened age where there are plenty of people who choose to get involved in various forms of adults-only entertainment because they like doing it. Not just because they like having sex, either; consider the artists, who just enjoy drawing naked people because, it turns out, they're good at it — to name just one example.

Why am I talking about porn? Because there are some who fear that Visa and MasterCard's at least partially successful encroachment into determining what it is and is not "acceptable" for people to get their rocks off to in the privacy of their own homes will mean that they will then start looking at what they might consider to be other forms of "unacceptable" media. Media that, say, tells the stories of marginalised groups, or which deals with challenging themes that society would rather we just swept under the rug.

Doki Doki Literature Club is not porn. But it being suddenly branded as "unacceptable" on a platform as big as Google Play sets a worrying precedent — one that people need to stand up and object to, forcefully. Thankfully, the game is still available on a variety of other platforms, including iOS, Switch, PlayStation, Xbox and PC — but for how long?

"[Doki Doki Literature Club] is widely celebrated for portraying mental health in a way that meaningfully connects deeply with players around the world, helping them to feel heard, understood and less alone on their journey," says creator Dan Salvato. "Managing to achieve that — making a truly meaningful difference by using the power of fiction to connect to others — is what I'm most grateful for. It inspires me every day to keep making cool new things, things that can really reach others, especially those in need of connection."

It's an important piece of work that does not deserve to be silenced, so I sincerely hope Salvato and Serenity Forge are able to get the situation resolved as soon as they can — without having to compromise on the work they have created.

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#oneaday Day 670: Too Much Game

Apparently No Man's Sky has had another big update, bringing with it some sort of monster-training metagame to add to all the other things that game already does. With every new addition to that game, I feel myself less and less likely to ever return to it. Because it's just too much. There is too much game there.

This is an unpopular opinion, I know, because people love how much work Hello Games has put into No Man's Sky since its rather tepid launch ten years ago (which I rather enjoyed!) and from certain angles, this outlook probably looks a tad ungrateful, particularly as the last ten years of updates to the game have all been completely free rather than paid expansions or DLC.

I'm not denying that it is an admirable thing that the team behind the game have done — and to be honest, I'm most impressed that they've been able to make continually updating their ten-year old product somehow if not profitable then at least sustainable, with the studio only releasing one new game in the meantime — but… it's just too much.

No Man's Sky was already a sprawling, expansive sandbox game when it first launched. No, it perhaps wasn't quite what had been promised in the initial hype cycle, but it did have value, and it did feel like it had a clear artistic vision behind it; just one that wasn't particularly well appreciated. With every new major update, though, I feel like the game just gets more and more unwieldy — and, more to the point, potentially impenetrable to anyone either starting it for the first time, or anyone coming back to it after a long break.

This is where I am. I like the idea of No Man's Sky. I like the idea of a modern sandbox space sim. But I think you can put too much game in your game. If I were to boot No Man's Sky up now — and I could, I own a copy on Steam! — I would have absolutely no idea what I was supposed to be doing, what systems I was supposed to be engaging with, what was worthwhile doing, what was outdated and not really worth bothering with. And the game wasn't exactly forthcoming with a coherent sense of "this is what you're supposed to do in this game" from the outset.

You can probably say the same for any game that has evolved and changed over the course of a long period, of course. I tried Phantasy Star Online 2 when it first launched in English, and found it completely unapproachable, because the English version launched with a good 10 years of Japanese updates and additional material already loaded into it from the outset. Likewise, I'm sure Final Fantasy XIV probably seems rather daunting to anyone considering joining it for the first time now — though I will note that FFXIV has always been quite good about trickling out your access to its various features according to your progress through the main story, rather than immediately throwing you in at the deep end and bombarding you with a thousand possible things to do from the very beginning. (Final Fantasy XI is another matter, mind.)

To be clear: I don't begrudge anyone their apparently ongoing enjoyment of No Man's Sky, nor do I wish any ill on Hello Games for continuing to support what has turned out to be their flagship release. I'm just saying that I find it completely and utterly overwhelming, and I'm not sure I'm ever going to return to it at this point.

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